Some books have a lingering after taste, and though I finished Saima Mir’s ‘The Khan’ about three weeks ago, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. It has been called ‘bold’ and ‘unique’ and it is those things, without a doubt. You could call it ‘The Godfather’ reimagined and re-told: where the Khans are the new Corleones with Jia Khan as their new head, Bradford being their area of influence. A sort of South Asian Sopranos.

But ultimately, the story of the Khan is not a retelling or a reimagining – it stands on its own legs with a compelling woman at its centre. She is what keeps you thinking about the book long after you’re done with it.

Did I like Jia, with her rum-soaked almond eyes and her soft and golden skin? I’m still not sure.

But what I can say is that there were moments where I felt like I was her. Mir describes Jia’s anger unfolding inside her, slow and insidious as she beholds her tortured brother, all the more powerful because she cannot give vent to it at that moment because her nemesis expects a hysterical reaction. This moment defines Jia for me – because she is a woman of deep feelings, but one who is able to control them into cool, calculated revenge.

I felt Jia’s love for her family, particularly her older brother Zan. There’s a wonderful metaphor in the book where Mir compares the bonds of family to the threads in a jamawar pattern. It’s a wonderful piece of writing but it also explains not just the bonds of any family, but that of a South Asian family. And not just any desi family – a Pakhtun family.

But there were also times when I couldn’t relate to Jia at all. Her coldness towards her son (a defence mechanism, perhaps, because the intense love she felt for him would have made her weak and unable to take the reins of the family business?) are one such instance. Her actions towards the end of the book made me reassess what I thought of her all along. In the end, she is both human and inhuman, intensely vulnerable but also cold hearted, loyal but ambitious. Like most strong women I know, she defies predictable patterns of behaviour. Mir lulls the reader into assuming her motives because she is a woman only to dispel them in an unpredictable ending that leaves one asking more questions.

What I loved most about this book was Mir’s writing.
It’s gorgeous. For some people, the extended metaphors can be tiring; for me, they were a delight. What I did feel, however, that the re-building of the Khan empire was a tad bit rushed – it came too soon and I wanted to see Jia struggling a bit more to achieve what she does in the end.

There are Jo Malone candles and Hum TV dramas, there is halal food and Savile Row jackets. It all makes sense. It fits in without jarring, which is so refreshing because it is believable and still new. ‘The Khan’ turns stereotypes on their heads – again and again one finds oneself making assumptions which are promptly challenged. That is, to my mind, what makes it an incredible read.

HOMEBODY HAS BACK PAIN

So I had plenty of illusions of what motherhood would be like for me. The minute I found out I was pregnant I became anxious. I was convinced and desperately afraid that I would  unable to love my child, lost in a cloud of confusion. I looked up options for what I could do and helplines where I could call should I experience such emotions. I was prepared. Luckily, I was not that one woman out of ten who suffers from postnatal depression. I felt a surge of love when I held my daughter and that has only grown and deepened with time. I sometimes look at her and wonder how I ever functioned without her; how my life ever seemed complete without her in my arms.

What I did not expect was disability.

I know disability is a big term to use. I am not in a wheelchair. Neither am I so physically impaired that I cannot take care of my child. But the challenges of dealing with a post-natal body have caught me unawares and I’m still dealing with them and for the time-being, I am dis-abled, not having the agency to do things by myself for my baby. And unlike post-natal depression, there is no way to get help for this, unless I dish out loads of money.

First it was the episiotomy. For those who don’t know, this is a surgical cut between the muscles of the vagina and anus – basically to create more space for baby to come out. It’s a fairly common procedure and usually, after a few weeks of discomfort, it heals.

My stitches tore before my tear healed. I waddled around, trying to make sure that there was no unnecessary friction. The midwife who was supposed to come round to my house to check on me forgot to do so and I walked around with a wound for two weeks before pleading with a GP to have a look at me. It was agony to sit. It was agony to stand. It was agony to walk. And these are all necessary actions one has to perform when one is taking care of a baby day in and day out. The doctor nodded politely and prescribed pain-killers and told me to get on as best as I could.

Most women go through this, I was told. So basically, shut up and move on.

After four months and a surgical procedure (folks – an anaesthesia in the vagina has got to be one of the most awful sensations ever) I had finally recovered. I discovered the joy and freedom of wheeling my baby out in the pram and walking everywhere without wanting to die at every step. It had taken four months, but I was finally there. I had healed.

That’s when I had my first back spasm. I was lifting my daughter out of her bouncer when suddenly it felt like someone had jammed a tazer in my spine. I almost fainted. And then followed weeks and weeks of pain  – anywhere from dull throbbing to sharp piercing stabs. There was a point when I was on a dose of Paracetamol, Codeine and Naproxen which made me nauseous all the time. However, a few osteopathy sessions and I was healed.

Or so I thought.

I bent down to kiss my nephew. My neck spasmed and I wore a neck brace for two weeks. I got out of bed. Spasm. I put Sophia in her pram. Spasm.

Each time I was unable to do anything except brush my own teeth (with steely nerve).  I spent a lot of money to get help and went to more osteopathy sessions, knowing that my insurance company would refuse to insure me in the future since, in the words of my osteopath ‘They don’t like chronic problems.’

All through this process, I was unprepared for the psychological and emotional toll of constant pain in my body. I felt and do feel like a failure. I am dependent on other people in a country where no one has time and sometimes, no inclination to help someone who appears fit but isn’t. I lost all confidence in my ability to do the simplest things. Case in point – my current struggle is that I have put my daughter in the large crib and I have no idea how I’m going to take her out because I can’t bend. The thought of putting Sophia in a car seat gives me a headache – it has killed my back before and I don’t want to be in a situation where I’m on my knees in a car park.

And I feel guilty – that I’m a drain on my husband’s money –whatever we were supposed to be saving thanks to my staying at home is going into paying my cleaner to help around the house. I feel inept because I see  other mums taking their babies to classes, giving them lots of fresh air, swinging them around and those are things I’m not capable of right now. Most of the time when I’m too tired of hurting, I plonk Sophia in front of the television.

But most of all, I’m angry. I’m angry at the GP who wouldn’t recommend more physiotherapy because I shouldn’t, and I quote, 'overreact' at 'twinges'. I’m angry that while most women tend to have some degree of incontinence after birth, this is seen as something to just hush up about and deal with, even though it is a serious issue that needs to be resolved. 

I’m angry about how the seriousness of postnatal pain is minimised. I’m angry that women are given an invisible badge of glory if they went through a ‘natural birth’ even if it leaves them with post-traumatic stress disorder (and this is real – a friend I know is undergoing treatment because of the trauma she went through at the hands of the midwives who were unsympathetic to her suffering). I’m angry that all physical distress is waved off as inevitable and ‘will heal with time’ when most of the time, it doesn’t and requires medical intervention. I’m angry at how people laughingly say ‘childbirth breaks the body doesn’t it?’ I would love someone say that to a man – a war veteran or a sports player. Yet the mothers who suffer and try and cover that suffering up in a mask of courage constantly see their pain trivialized and dismissed by other men and women.

I’m stiff with pain as I write this – but I know that I will eventually heal. But this experience has given me a lot of empathy because I have seen how people don’t really get the deal with chronic pain. How the smallest tasks seem Herculean and require a will of steel. How the world for someone with a disability can shrink unless they fight for it not to. I know what it’s like to buck yourself up every day even though your self confidence is crumbling away every time you cannot do something basic that other people can do.

Living in pain takes a huge toll on a person and most women who give birth are in serious discomfort for a long, long time. They need better aftercare and they need empathy because they are taking care of another life completely dependent on them. And most of all, they need a different narrative - one that doesn't glorify pain in the name of motherhood but one that sees it as an illness to be treated like any other. 

THE IDIOT TOURIST

(printed in Destinations Magazine)

http://destinations.com.pk/destination/the-idiot-tourist-2/

I trundled along on the bumpy, hard roof of a pink, green and gray public bus boasting the grand honorific of ‘Prince Baboo’. It was a novelty that I, a mere woman, was sitting proudly and unapologetically on a space exclusively reserved for male passengers in their daily commute. But this was not an ordinary work day and I was not bringing about a gender revolution. No, today was Sunday and I was one of an entourage partaking in the Super Savari Express tour of Karachi. So I climbed up the ladder at the back of the bus and stationed myself, a grinning Buddha wearing a dupatta, right in front, to get the best view of a city I had lived in for twenty years, but which I was determined to see with new eyes today. Terry Pratchett once proclaimed that ‘Tourist’ was another word for Idiot. I would gladly embrace idiocy if it meant shutting off my Karachiite mind as to the politics, the voyeurism and the privilege this tour entailed.

So as we hurtled down Elphinstone Street amid the derelict and once-grand buildings of Saddar, pock-marked by bill-boards and flashy signs that stood in stark contrast to each other, I didn’t care about architectural synchronicity. I dutifully oohed and aahed when shown a grime-covered building with Corinthian pillars and broken windows that used to be the Freemasons’ lodge. I willed my novelist brain to imagine old gentlemen congregating in secret midnight meetings in humid summer nights, with curious dress code and secret pass words, deciding the fate of the world. I surrendered to the melancholia of the place as we left it behind – a romantic piece of history appropriated by martial law.

The sky was a greyish pink as we viewed the stunted cityscape. It struck me that old Karachi was a place of domes and minarets. They weren’t imposing, but ever present: the ivory dome of the Supreme Court the elegant minars of the Hindu gymkhana being especially pretty. I began to watch out for them – rising proudly to the sky, above the trellised mess of electricity wires and hotchpotch of broken wood-work and windows underneath. I purposefully blocked out any clichéd metaphor of them trying to disassociate themselves with our socio-political mess – NO – that was what a Karachi resident would think – I was the idiot tourist, stubbornly sifting the gladness from the gloom.

So it was with great alacrity that I allowed myself to be off-loaded for breakfast at an authentic Saddar dhaaba. My family and I were herded into one which served crispy hot parathas and soft, omelettes fragrant with red chillies and coriander. I turned around to a fellow traveller who was not nearly as enthused as me. He proclaimed that this was too sanitized an eating place to be authentic. No, there was another dhaaba, on the road, near Bundu khan, that served the most delicious halwa puri. He leaned back and crossed his arms, gazing in general disapproval at the orderliness of the meal – the promptness of it.

‘The dhaabaa experience, you see, is about the opposite,’ he lisped. ‘The mess. The lack of timing. The delightful surprise when flavors explode in your mouth when you least expect them to.’ Since I had just bitten a green chilli and all sorts of implosions were ringing off in my brain, I ignored his complaining. He wasn’t in the mood to play tourist, and that was his problem.

I finished my meal with gusto – and drank about two litres of cold water to douse the fire on my tongue and strolled out amidst the Pathan vendors, squatting beside orange and green gas cylinders that were to fuel their mobile stalls – slurping tea and assessing us with their kohl-rimmed eyes. Many had placed their fruit on the road, right in the gutter water.

All of a sudden I chanced upon a small little hovel of a shop proclaimed itself as TIT BITS BOOKS STALL. My heart soared: TIT BITS’s stalls in Sunday bazaar had been my mecca while growing up – I made my weekly pilgrimage to buy at least 20 second hand books a week. My identity and literary tastes had been determined by this bookseller– who had lounged arrogantly on a pile of old magazines and magnanimously slashed his prices for eager and poor bookworms like me. I hurried inside to see at last the fountainhead of all that literary goodness expecting a quaint little shop full of treats and vintage books. Instead I saw the owner, my old friend Saleem Bhai, huddled behind a small counter, piled high with a mess of books. On the left was another broken column of fiction books, on the left, much of the same. Their covers were torn, the pages were missing. As I stood aghast, he recognized me instantly.

‘You were my best customer!’ he grinned. I was told to pick up a book. Any book. Totally Phree.

But I wasn’t in the mood for commerce. ‘What happened?’ I asked? What became of the millions of books and the grand book fair Tit Bits boasted every Sunday? This place was a far cry from what it used to be in its heyday. Saleem Bhai shrugged, giving me a summary of being edged out by competition, driven back to this small room where two people could barely stand shoulder to shoulder. There was no electricity and no way to see what books were where – he didn’t have the time to organize them. After I picked and forcibly paid for an old book on the techniques of fly fishing (it was right on top and therefore easy to get a hand on) I slumped out, back to the bus, whose colors seemed garish and plastic flowers waving about on antenna wires seemed a mockery to the seriousness of the situation. I sat inside now, next to the driver, inhaling the fumes of the diesel engine. I could no longer force an enthusiasm that I didn’t feel.

I frowned through the 166 year old Shri Swaminarayan Temple where an old, tiny lady gave us all a compulsory but heartfelt hug. A peacock glared at us as we traversed its holy grounds – and some photographed the statues of Radha and Krishna as a bald priest began a plaintive bhajan. Feeling more and more like an intruder, I ran back to the bus and sat in desultory silence through the rest of the trip; a distant onlooker rather than an active participant. It was hard not to admire the gorgeous array of chandeliers and grand inner space of Taheri Mosque; nor was I able to resist waving at the grinning Zorastrian priest right outside the stairs of the forbidden Parsi Dar-e-Meher as he read the morning newspaper. I sat quietly on the pews of St. Patrick’s Church as looked at the stained glass depictions of the Passion of Christ when a catholic girl sat down next to me and ask me if I was visiting and I nodded. She proceeded to tell me about her life, how her parents fought and how she tried to commit suicide in college because it was all too much for her. She gave me her phone number and told me to give her a call.

It was all too much for her, and for me too, it seemed. I was tired of this tour, of this city where everything seemed broken down. The afternoon sun was lashing down on us and all my optimism had evaporated.

We were taken to another crowded part of the city – I’d lost track of where. I hobbled off Babu, growing less Princely by the minute, barely noticing the archway when suddenly I came upon an unexpected expanse of marble space. There, in grand view, stood the New Memon Masjid, with its three voluptuous domes that puffed out like meringues against the blue sky. Flanked by grand and tapering minars, it sapped my exhaustion away. I climbed up the stairs and saw the prayer spaces etched onto the glistening floor. The domed archways shone silver in the glare of light reflected from off the marble. To my right, a large pool, cool, blue and calm, awaited the ablutions of the namazis. It cooled my eyes and soothed my soul and I was drawn to it. The tour guide told us that the mosque had been built on an old cemetery and, as they razed the old graves, two bodies had been discovered, fresh and intact, new as the day they had been interred. These had been re-buried under the cool shade beneath the pool – and very visible through a locked jaali, adorned by plastic-wrapped floral wreaths.

At last I had stumbled upon a gladness I didn’t think possible – into a folktale that was still whispered reverently through generations. Karachi, despite its grime and gloom, had pockets of magic for those in search. We think we know a place until it surprises us. I had given up on any hopes of pleasant discovery until I stumbled onto this divine mosque. I have held on to the story of the graves, to the splendour of the mosque and the quiet peace I found within, because an intriguing narrative had met with magnificent architecture. Here, at holy graves, I rediscovered my curiosity and wonder. I said a prayer and allowed myself to be pulled away, back to the head office, where a thank you and a farewell ended the six hour day trip.

Going back to my house, I thought of T.S. Eliot’s words from ‘Little Gidding’: ‘We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.’ My trip was like that – the idiot explorer turned cynic turned convert. I think I will remain forever, the idiot tourist, for the discovery, when it does come, is definitely worth it.

HOMEBODY GETS REJECTED

On a dark, rainy day in St. Albans (made unusually bleak because this was supposed to be a warm week in May but Arctic winds had sabotaged everyone’s hopes, dreams and expectations) I got a message from my mother. It said, very simply:

‘Visa rejected again. Ab bas.’

All the disappointment, hurt and pain in those five words made my heart bleed for my little mommy, whom I pictured with a dupatta on her head, going to Gerrys and returning exhausted and defeated because she had been refused the right to visit her daughter. Again. This was the second time in seven months she'd applied – and was insistent that she wasn’t going through this process again.

Moving to a new country is a displacement in every sense, but at times like these, it feels like exile. One can get used to the weather, a new routine, different habits and different structures. But one cannot get used to family ties severed by outside forces.

It hurts.

The conversations circulating around the refusal  are the usual ones. I’m usually interrogated with the intention of finding out what I did incorrectly so that the blame can fall on my incompetent shoulders.

Which category did you apply for? Did you provide a cover letter? Bank statements? Property deeds? Evidence of valid American Visa?

Then follows empathetic outrage. You did ALL this? Then why? Fazool. Bloody visa officers – low I.Q, high arrogance. Bloody pigs.

After this conspiracy theories take over.  

1. There’s a quota for this stuff which gets filled up very fast and then they merrily reject everyone applying afterwards.
2. They aren’t giving ANYONE a visa these days
3. It’s the Indians in Abu Dhabi taking perverse pleasure in rejecting Pakistanis
4. You have to know someone on the inside. I know someone on the inside. Next time, tell me and I’ll talk to them.

And then you go through the corresponding arguments in your head.

1. If there’s a quota, then how come other people are getting a visit visa for the summer still?
2. But I know two people who DID get their visa just last week!
3. If it’s the Indians and all Indians are evil, then why do any Pakistanis get visas at all?
4. If you knew someone on the inside, why THE FUCK didn’t you tell me earlier so I didn’t have to go through THIS and put my mum through it also? (The sentiment is followed by guilt at my readiness to by-pass the system - and the knowledge that despite everything, I'm ready to go flout it anyway - because the situation is such that one is made to feel like a criminal for wanting to meet one's loved ones.)

The ‘this’ that I describe is not just disappointment. It is anger because the reasons for refusal don’t make sense. ‘You don’t have enough money to go back,’ they say in the first instance, and in the second they refer to the same sum and ask ‘How can you justify that you have so much money?’ In any case, what reason is there to justify a woman’s income if her children are offering to sponsor her in the first place?

It is a sense of helplessness because all routes of appeal have been revoked, which makes visa refusal easy and one can see visa officers doing so with greater impunity.

It is a sense of injustice because the people who DO get the visa have, in the past, brought people, usually maids, over for six months and kept them on for twenty years. Because they have granted visas to religious clerics who have proceeded to go to Luton and incite revolt against the government. Because the rich and famous who smuggle and steal are allowed easy and free movement and aren’t really required to justify their income.  Because even in my angriest moment, I realize that such checks and balances are necessary precisely because we as a nation have bent so many rules and screwed the system over so many times that British paranoia over our entry can’t be seen as unjustified.

It’s a feeling of being guilty until proven innocent (followed by the wry realization that the guilty end up getting visas anyway) – and no trial is on offer. ‘What reason do you have to leave the country?’ they ask in a letter that is preluded with a 'Do Not Reply'.

To this my mum would answer – ‘I will be buried next to my husband here in Karachi – and besides – I have no desire to do the dishes for the rest of my life.’ But they don’t offer you the opportunity for an interview.

It’s a feeling of being dirty and guilty. A random stranger gets to interpret all the facts you’ve carefully provided, cull out the ones relevant to them and ignore all the rest, and question you as to how legitimate you are. And they type, in no uncertain terms, ‘We don’t believe you when you say you’ll go back.’ And with that neatly typed slap in the face, there’s a red stamp of refusal and a neat email telling you that your visa has been processed.

After a helpless ‘What can you do,’ and journey to resignation, the Rejects start dealing with life again. My mother has a better come back – ‘There’s some maslehat in this – it’s for the best.’ Perhaps there is. But she smarts and winces as she reassures me and I put on a brave face for her benefit. And so we go, waiting for time to pass until the month when I can visit her crawls slowly towards me.

In the meantime, there is just separation.

HOMEBODY AND HER ORCHIDS

In the last scene of the movie ’28 days’, a kooky ex-addict, Gerhardt, cries over a dead plant, insisting that he did everything to keep it alive: talking to it, stroking it, naming it and all that jazz. When the florist asks whether he watered it, Gerhardt pauses, looks down at his lifeless friend, and breaks down all over again, feeling ashamed at his own ineptitude. He has failed the ‘plant test’ of rehabilitation - that indicates that if you’re able to take care of yourself and a plant, then you’re capable of entering new relationships and adjusting in an uncertain world without the crutches you’ve been previously used to.

So when I moved to St. Albans, I bought an orchid inspired, in part, by Stephen King’s excellent definition of homesickness, which he calls it the ‘ache of the uprooted plant.’ I didn’t struggle with addiction or relationships, but I was displaced and uprooted, put in a climate that made me cold inside and out; transplanted among people who weren’t my friends or family. For a long time I felt a certain disability of spirit - an existential cowardice where I would wake up in bed, wide eyed and trembling, wondering where the familiar sounds of my life had gone. There was no whining of the low-voltage ceiling fan or the khat-khat of nearby construction. I even found myself longing for the caw of the crows and the chirp of the mynahs and the mournful sounds of the Azaan which, though depressing, at least provided my day with structured intervals. 

Everything was a hurdle: interaction with in-laws whom I hadn’t figured out yet; using the dishwasher and washing machine for the first time in my life; buying a ticket for the train or topping up my oyster. What I hadn’t expected about homesickness or orchid care was the constant feeling of stupidity that underpinned everything I did.

So when I went to Morrisons to do some groceries and saw an  sad looking orchid plant for sale for £5, I decided to adopt it. I was to discover later that orchids are the moodiest of plants. They prefer a rainforest’s humidity, grow under the shelter of thick trees, reaching towards dappled sunglight and like only an occasional soaking. And yet they thrive in nearly every house in the UK. Go figure.

I killed my first orchid by  overwatering it, constantly  changing its position in the house and spraying it with feed every time I looked at it. In short, I coddled it to death. I was exercising too much control, on it and also on myself. I was trying to fit in my new environment as soon as possible: forcing myself into relationships that were never going to work, with people who were too different or simply uninterested. I took two driving tests, gripping the wheel, clenching my teeth, not breathing - and failed both of them. So when the florist proclaimed that my orchid was dead, I was, like poor Gerhardt, devastated.

Yet life is a strange thing. It will prevail just when you stop coercing it to do so.

I bought a second plant and this time, read and youtubed everything about orchid care. I discovered that they require room. Their roots need to be freed from the packaging and aired and sprayed but only occasionally. They need conversation and love and careful replanting. So I let my orchid be, freeing  its roots from the moss and bark and replanting it in a bigger pot that gave it more room. To my amazement, it perked up after a week. I was jubilant!

And then its flowers all fell off. 

However, the leaves were still waxy and green.

Battling panic, I went on to google and read that this was the dormant period where the orchid stores up energy to re-bloom. I placed my poor plant pet on my side table and encouraged it,  ignoring my husband’s comment that it was a  highly depressing sight, with a single stem reaching into empty space, colourless and gnarled.

Taking my cue from my poor plant, I also took a while to be still. I let go of many people whom I thought would welcome me with open arms but who refused to do so. And in doing so I opened myself towards new relationships - friends who opened up a new world of camaraderie and culture and knowledge. I let go of trying to do everything perfectly - and passed my driving test. Quite by accident, I ended up setting up local meet up groups in the area and also stumbled into a book club of lovely ladies who liked to talk about life and the meaning of it. I gave my brain time to cool down and creativity crept in and I’ve started writing again.

I no longer wake up with dread and panic.

And just yesterday, I am happy to report that Le Orchid  has flowered. 

Little alien pods had clustered at the end of its stem all of last week, bunching and puckering up. I waited for one month with baited breath - trying not to get too excited because you know - if an orchid becomes unhappy, these buds implode from within and refuse to open up. But yesterday, beautiful teak and orange flowers with pink faces greeted  me in the early dawn, vibrantly silhouetted against the glazed window and the early light of the grey dawn.

I screamed and startled my husband who jumped out of bed with remarkable agility - ready to battle whatever foe had wandered into our sleepy sanctuary. Needless to say he wasn’t as enthused when he found out the orchid was the cause of his scare, groaning and grumbling all the way to the bathroom about ugly plants and crazy wives.

I can’t stop admiring my orchid. I honestly can’t. It has shown so much grit and perseverance. It looks at me and seems to say - if you can take care of me, woman, you can do the same for yourself. I went today and purchased 3 or 4 more and have created a small forest of thick leaves and green-grey roots and vibrant flowers. There will be challenges and more obsessing, but there will also be great beauty at the end of all the effort. I’m hoping I can say the same for my new life here. 

HOMEBODY IS HIJACKED

Once I passed my driving test, I became heavily dependent on the Tom-Tom, GPS or SATNAVs as they are called here in the UK. Satellite navigation systems are a godsend for the directionally-challenged such as myself, but they only work if one lives in sunny areas of open fields and small trees. If it’s cloudy, or raining, or high buildings flank you on both sides, the Satnav gets confused.

So good luck driving down Central London or anywhere else in a country whose default weather is blustery, wet and windy.

I named my satellite navigation system Simone.

She sounds like a Simone: a high-coiffured, perky-breasted thirty-something woman-of-the-world wearing a red Gucci business dress patiently repeating driving instructions and talking down to you so that you end up feeling terribly incompetent and stupid. She is posh and sophisticated – calculating traffic-free routes and allowing you to customize your journey based on whether you want to drive through picturesque lanes, avoid motorways or have a preference for country roads. If I ask her to, she will hand over the reins to automatic driving and even get the car to parallel park while I sit with my hands folded in my lap. Her Received Pronunciation Accent lulls me into a false sense of confidence so that I usually don’t find out she’s messed up until I see a sign saying ‘500 miles to Scotland’ when really, I just need to go to Mill Hill twenty minutes away from home.

Yesterday – Simone made me go round the same roundabout thrice because she couldn’t figure out where we were. When I was finally merrily cruising along the M1 motorway as I was supposed to be doing, she suddenly asked me to TURN AROUND IF POSSIBLE. Now even I know that you don’t execute a U-Turn on a highway with cars going 70 miles per hour. My heart stopped beating and my head started pounding – I was hurtling along at great speed to an unknown destination, yet one which Simone had set me on in the first place.

She started beeping to further ease my apprehension. My knuckles went white and fingers went cold with every pinging alert. I was told to take the next exit, which I was assured was coming in 100 yards – except that I knew I had already passed it some time ago. I drove in abject terror for another twenty minutes, resenting her authoritative and confident tone despite her incompetence. Common sense kicked in and I decided to take the next exit to stop at a petrol station and gather my senses. But as soon as I did so, Simone became agitated:

RE-ROUTING. RE-ROUTING. TAKE THE THIRD EXIT FROM THE ROUNDABOUT. TAKE THE THIRD EXIT.

Which was all very well but there was no roundabout. I continued on, frustrated and panicking, when lo and behold, one did materialize eventually. However, the highlighted route on the screen indicated the 2nd exit, not the 3rd. I decided to follow the Simone instead of the screen – she put me back on the wrong motorway. And then turned impatient and insisted, in a gratingly emotionless voice, that I make a U-Turn.

As this was happening, my husband called and asked me how my day was going. Hyperventilating and very close to tears, I yelled into the speaker phone: ‘I DON’T THINK WE’LL EVER SEE EACH OTHER AGAIN! SIMONE HAS HIJACKED ME!’ He calmly asked me who Simone was, and then suggested I cancel route guidance and enter the destination address again.

Which I did.

Simone returned sounding fresh, patient and unruffled and informed me smartly to keep driving on – I was on the correct motorway after all and in fact, just 15 minutes away from where I needed to be.

You’d think this was a freak incident, but the other day I wanted to go to a hardware store and typed in the postcode. Simone took me to the town sink-hole that had swallowed three driveways in one morning. She wanted me to go into it before she could say, ‘YOU HAVE REACHED YOUR DESTINATION.’

I sometimes think Simone does this because she resents me since I’m the new woman in my husband’s life and have replaced her reign (or tyranny, whichever you prefer). I posited this theory to my husband who merely rolled his eyes and carried on watching his football match. However, I had my revenge last week when I changed the Satnav settings. Simone has now become a Sam and we are getting along famously, thank you very much!

Homebody Takes a Driving Test

I used to think that I knew how to drive; that it was a skill I had acquired when I braved the traffic of Shahrah-e-Faisal for 4 years in order to get to and from Karachi University. I was a hoyden on the road: racing buses and trucks and rickshaws – but studiously avoiding motorcycles. These last are a highway menace: swerving like broken pendulums on wheels as if the road was their little practice lane. If  you collided with one of them the class argument was sure to be whipped up:  YOU were the car owner and THEY weren’t, so naturally, everything was your fault.

So when I was told I’d have to pass the UK driving test and it was really hard, I pooh-poohed the notion. After all. How tough could it be? I was a Karachiite. I was a road demon. I laughed in the face of the UK highway code.

 The theory test was a breeze. I read a short booklet containing about 300 odd driving rules that were far easier to forget than comprehend; did some practice tests and then  passed the online test in 20 minutes. The examiner – a Pakistani Briton, said, ‘Ab Shazaf Shadaab ho gayee.’ I took a bow and headed off home, proud as can be.

When the day of the practical test rolled around, I was the picture of confidence. My driving instructor told me I had it in the bag if I could just hold my nerve, and I was grabbing on with iron fists. The examiner was a short, bearded man who explained the rules, asked me to take the seat and told me to show him how the windscreen would be de-fogged. Easy-peasy. Then it came time to drive.

I cruised along merrily, chatting, waiting to be told to turn right or left, or keep straight. And I jabbered away: did  he know I had been doing this for a while – that I was from Pakistan where driving was far harder, that I was thinking of doing a PGCE and also, fun fact: the man who executed Saint Albans was purported to have gone blind once he beheaded him? My examiner – Brian, nodded politely and continued with his instructions.

 ‘No seriously, the executioner’s eyes popped out. There’s a depiction of the scene in several glass paintings in Verulamium Cathedral’ I insisted while expertly leaving a roundabout on the third exit, checking the mirrors and indicating at all the correct times. Brian nodded politely and made me reverse round a corner, go up a hill and down an underpass and eventually returned us to the driving school.

I switched the car off and beamed at him. He coughed, looked down and declared I had failed.

My face and heart plummeted to the ground.

Failed, had he said?

Yes. I had failed in the first 5 minutes of the test because I hadn’t seen a pedestrian on a zebra crossing and that is a major offence. A stupid woman walking a stupid Dalmatian had crossed the road and I hadn’t waited for her to get completely off before driving ahead. Plus a portion of the Dalmatian’s tail was still wagging above the white line.

I had failed by the tip of a canine’s tail. (But then all those stripes and spots were a hazard for any erstwhile test taker.)

I was driven home in utter humiliation. If I hadn’t talked so much, focused more on the road, if I’d just slowed down, I’d be with a license. But now here I was: waiting to take another test to go through the process again in three month’s time because the test centers in the UK are always busy. I imagined Brian going into the little driving examiner’s coffee room and saying, ‘Man this woman wouldn’t shut up, and she almost drove over a dog. Failed in the first five minutes. Kept referring to her Karachi driving – apparently they like to run each other over on a regular basis there.’

People were nice enough about my test. They all said everyone failed at least once, so not to worry. I gave myself a pep talk and continued to lug heavy grocery bags uphill – with decreasing patience and growing resentment.

By the time my second test rolled around – I was not keeping my cool. I was nervous and hysterical and my driving instructor – a lovely man named Haj told me I would be okay if I just breathed. I snapped out that it was all too much – walking and sitting and breathing and driving – there was a limit to multitasking. And then I saw my examiner – a smiling old man named Gregg who called me Shaz and told me it would be okay and that I should stop hyperventilating otherwise he wouldn’t be able to continue the test. I didn’t talk. I gulped and coughed and repeated and confirmed every instruction before executing it. And all was well until, in the last 5 minutes, I exited a roundabout and made the car ahead slow down.

Here’s the rule for learners – you can’t make another car slow down on a test. The Karachiite woman driver in me doesn’t get it – I slowed people down all the time and they seemed to expect it and gave way accordingly. But here, as a learner, slowing traffic down instead of waiting for it is a major offence. I failed. Gregg didn’t help matters much: he kept going ‘Shaz… Shaz…Shaz…you almost had it. The pity of it! The pity of it!’ By the time the test ended I was comforting him.

People weren’t so kind this time. ‘Second time fail? Haw hai. I passed in the first go.’ It didn’t help that it was mostly my in-laws who said this – they are all expert drivers. I clenched my teeth and said nothing and went back to walking around trying to figure out the suburban bus network – since I was obviously never going to drive in the near future.

There was no reason for me to fail my tests, really: I had the most ideal conditions – prime time of no traffic at 9 a.m., fine, sunny weather and good health. The third time – everything was a mess. There was after-school traffic and the roads were jammed. There were harried mums and irresponsible school children jay walking everywhere. I was sick with the flu and nauseous. The half hour test lasted for one hour because all routes were jammed. And I had my first examiner – Brian – again, though he didn’t recall who I was which was lucky because I had no desire to be remembered.

I gave way. I waited. I manoeuvred all the while trying to retain the contents of my stomach. As we turned into the driving center’s car park (one which I was beginning to hate) we stopped and Brian looked at me. I looked at him, waiting, preparing for the worst. Maybe there was some stroller flap the breeze of my passing car had whipped up at too high a velocity or something ridiculous like that.

He whispered conspiratorially – ‘You’ve passed.’

I screamed and promptly started crying. Haj, who’d been waiting outside, saw me break down, ran inside and shook my shoulders. Brian coughed and looked embarrassed and filled in my pass certificate. I was driven off – triumphant but exhausted. I had done it – I was a UK driver. Which was fabulous, because I would boldly go where everyone went all the time – but on a freaking car this time! Yeah man!

But then, when your car is a Mercedes and you have a navigation system out to kill you – driving can seem a much more daunting experience. But THAT is another blog post.